IceCream wrote:
sure. but why not just actually learn the words instead instead of spending the time on the boring sentences?
Because it would deprive the words of their context (not all words require context, but many do) and because it wouldn't help you practice producing and interpreting Japanese sentence structure. I also insist on using voice clips read by a native speaker for every sentence when possible (smart.fm is great for this), so it also helps me practice listening and pronunciation of complete sentences, not isolated words.
magamo wrote:
[...] you need to learn language register, context, and other subtleties through exposure to native material. As you just pointed out in your post with 熱い水, it's the contexts, collocations, and other subtleties that are really important to sound like a native speaker.
Apparently the 10,000 sentences Katzumoto is talking about are all from real native material, so they're richer in context and whatnot while pre-made sentence packs are very poor in this regard. As Nukemarine said, each pack is for a purpose, so they should be better in one regard. But they're not that great when it comes to the essential to achieve native fluency.
Context can only do so much for you, though. For example, if you see a sentence with the word お湯 -- whether it's from a sentence pack or real natve materials -- it's still not going to tell you that you can't say 熱い水. Especially in native materials, there won't be a footnote or anything to tell you that you have to say お湯 instead of 熱い水. The only way to learn this to either be extremely observant (more than I would be) or, more likely, simply be told that people just don't say 熱い水.
And that's the essential problem here: whether you're learning from sentence packs or not, it's not always easy to notice the most important or interesting things about the sentence.
There's also the point that when you put a sentence in your SRS from native materials, you'll often deprive it of its original context, so at that point it might as well have come from a sentence pack anyway.
Note that I'm not saying it's not necessary to use native materials to learn Japanese! You can never master any language without observing how it's actually used (and even if you could, what would be the point?). I'm just saying that I don't think that that has much to do with the "10,000 sentences in an SRS" thing.
I think the best way to practice production of Japanese, or any other language, is to get a journal at lang-8.com and write in it. Then, if you make mistakes, native speakers will correct you, so if you end up saying 熱い水, somebody will replace it with お湯 for you, and then you'll know that you can't say 熱い水.
- Kef
Last edited by furrykef (2009 November 02, 4:47 am)
